Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 356

2nd International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Ecological Studies (CESSES 2019) The Era of Crises: a Thematic Analysis of Ian McEwan's Saturday*

Yuan Shen Yichao Song University of Jinan Shanghai International Studies University Jinan, China 250022 Shanghai, China 200083

Abstract—In Saturday, Ian McEwan draws a picture of the All these years of his writing career, McEwan has Western society, culture and individuals after the 9/11 attack. commanded great academic attention with many a scholar This essay analyzes the theme of Saturday in the perspective of doing research and writing essays on his novels. This makes crisis. The post-9/11 era describes the western society after no exception for China. In recent years, Chinese scholars terrorist attack, the ambivalence about the Iraq war, and the have laid their emphasis mainly on McEwan works, be they prevalent certainty, revealing McEwan's grand view of Atonement, The Child in Time, The Ploughman's Lunch, creation. Second, the post-industrial part dissects the The Cement Garden, or First Love, Last Rites. Yu Hua, one consumerism, the conflicts between culture and science, and of the most celebrated writers in China, once spoke highly of homogeneity, showing the novelist's unique thoughts on Ian McEwan, this is Ian McEwan, he who seems always to culture. At last, the analysis of individual crisis put under tiptoe around the boarders, the boarders between terror and microscope the distorted intersubjectivity, discipline and institutionalization and recovery. This essay shows McEwan's comfort, coldness and warmth, absurdity and authenticity, concerns and also hopes for mankind. The thematic analysis of violence and softness, reason and emotions, yet his writings Saturday in the perspective of crisis helps unveil the writer's weave them all together. Like a king commanding countless diverse visions and his understanding of a community of of territory, Ian McEwan's boarder narrative make him the shared future for mankind, and his thoughts on crises of king. When he depicts hope, disappointment rears its head, society, culture and individuals. as do terror and comfort, coldness and warmth, absurdity and authenticity, violence and softness, reason and emotions. Keywords—crises; Ian McEwan; Saturday A smattering of lights, however, has been shed on Saturday, which was written in 2004 when the Iraq war just I. INTRODUCTION broke out, and when the western world had yet emerged from the debris of the 9/11 attack. In such context did A. Literary Review Saturday come into being, but in some intriguing way, it was Born in 1948 in Britain, Ian McEwan is one of the most confined to one single day — 15 February, 2003, which was prestigious contemporary novelists who still arrests attention somehow rarely seen in other novels. Its protagonist, Henry worldwide. He is quite adept at depicting in grandeur Perowne, is a contented man — a successful neurosurgeon, protagonists' psychological activities, his words painting a sitting on the high rung of the social ladder. He is blessed vivid picture of romance and loathe, desire and hatred, war with a joyous domestic life, and happily married to a and peace, death and effervescence, empathy and antipathy. newspaper lawyer, Rosalind, enjoying good relations with McEwan is an outstanding novelist and a meticulous his children, Daisy, a perspective poet, and Theo, a rather storyteller, weaving together the nuts and bolts of his plots distinguished blues singer. with precise caution. Entering the 21st century, albeit prosperity and An enlightened luminary and liberal born in modern technological breakthroughs, the western countries, Britain, McEwan very often puts the deep-rooted malaises of especially democratic ones, like Britain and the U.S., has society and the weaknesses of human beings under encountered multiple "crises". The hierarchal gap continues microscope in his audacious novels, in which he also let bare widening; terrorism once again rears its ugly head, though the conflicts of modern England, if not of the Western world. Al-Qaeda was wiped out, the still more blistering and sinister Till now, he has already earned himself The Man Booker ISIS has been sickling innocent civilians all over the world. Prize and Somerset Maugham Award. In 2008, The Times The author can keep counting and never exhaust the list. In featured him on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers Saturday still exists a silver bullet to the crises the author since 1945" and The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 19 mentioned above. Because after more than a decade, in its list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". Saturday still packs a punch in modern world. Though confined to one day, Saturday paints a vivid picture of the *Funds: This is a representative paper of "Shandong Higher Education lifestyle of modern Britain, the aftermath of 9/11, the Research Projects in Humanities and Social Sciences" (Project No. nervousness confronting the upcoming Iraq war, and most of J18RA247) and "Shandong Social Science Planning Fund Projects" (Project No.: 19DWWJ02). all, the "crises" haunting the western world. Thus, Saturday can be analyzed from the perspective of "crisis".

Copyright © 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 648 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 356

B. The Working Definition of Crisis dressing gown, without moving or making a sound, half About crisis there might emerge different explanations dreaming as he watched people die. and definitions. Merriam Webster defines it "an unstable or The traumas after terrorist attacks are felt throughout the crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is western world. All the morning after he saw the plane, impending, especially one with the distinct possibility of a Perowne was on edge and tried to find a thread in TV news. highly undesirable outcome or a situation that has reached a This trepidation is not only found in Perowne. For Theo, critical phase (Merriam Webster). A crisis is any event that is Perowne's son, 9/11 is also a watershed moment. This is the going (or is expected) to lead to an unstable and dangerous first time that Theo finds out that besides family and music, situation affecting an individual, group, community, or there is other thing that holds sway in his life. Now he once whole society. in a while leafs through the newspapers and politics also These definitions, however, are too broad to explain the emerges in the daily talks with his father. This dreadful crises discussed in Saturday. We still need a working mood permeates through the whole society. The 9/11 attack definition of "crisis". Ou Rong once wrote The Motif of has not only changed how people communicate with each Crisis in David Loge's Fiction, in which she wrote, "the 20th other, but also changed their way behaviors, transforming the century is an age crisis and the way Lodge dramatizes this individual concepts and social identities under the influence situation rounds off our survey of his four representative of public affairs (Ni, 2010: 68). works. As a man in in possession of muti-identities — a In the heels of the 9/11 attack, the democratic utopia led Catholic, a novelist, a critic, as well as a university professor, by the States collapsed. The Islamic utopia came into view. Lodge has been deeply concerned with various crises in After the cold war, democratic countries spearheaded by the modern Western society: crisis of religion, crisis of literature, U.S. have been promulgating the so-called soft power the crisis of literary criticism and crisis of higher education" (Ou world over. In the decades between the 1980s and 2000s, the Rong, 2007: 10). In the same way as Ou Rong wrote her number of liberal democracies (as defined by Freedom essay, the author also summed up three crises in Saturday: House) expanded from around 100 to close to 150. Never the crisis of the post 9/11 Era, the crisis of post-industrial before in the arc of human history had so many countries culture, and the crisis of the individual. Through the lens of given up so many political and economic buildings for one crisis, the author will spare no efforts to break apart Saturday, new mode. and find a way to deal with the crises in modern world. The U.S has always aspired to establish a world where democracy and freedom hold sway. The democratic utopia II. CRISIS OF THE POST-9/11 ERA under the disguise of freedom and democracy was almost completed. But the 9/11 attack signaled the bankruptcy of A. The Aftermath of Terrorism American's Holy Grail. The attack not just showcased the Till now, it has been 18 years since the two killing planes aversion and determination from Muslim world, but also have brought down the World Trade Center in New York. brought into our view a Muslim utopia dreamt by the All the past years, the whole world is sparing no efforts to jihadists. Both utopias, the Islamic or democratic, however, combat against terrorism and recovering from the trauma are actually dystopia. On the other hand, as to moral brought by 9/11. Writers all over the world have also tried to philosophy, they have the same disputes among them as we revive that tragedy in their books. After 9/11, some have here: they examine what are properly good both for the American and European writers have written many works body and the mind, good for human beings, and whether any themed on 9/11, like The Falling Man (2007) by Don Delillo outward thing can be called truly good, or if that term belong and Let the Great World Spin (2009) by Colum McCann only to the endowments of the soul. They inquire likewise (Dan Hansong, 2011: 3). Ian McEwan's Saturday is set on into the nature of virtues and pleasures; but their chief 15th February 2003, nearly two years after the catastrophe. dispute is concerning the happiness of a man, and wherein it On the Saturday morning, standing beside the shutter, Henry consists? Perowne witnessed an airliner on fire sliding toward the Heathrow Airport. This brought back the 9/11 attack to B. The Ambivalence of an Anti-war Demonstration Perowne. Could it be another terrorist attack? In an instant, his illusion of intellectual mastery over his surroundings is When Saturday was written, the Iraq war was already shattered and the euphoric views are replaced by dreadful under full swing, yet the novel was set one week prior to the imaginings of dread and death. war. And as noted earlier, the Saturday of the novel's title is no ordinary day; Henry Perowne witnessed an airliner on fire, Only 18 months earlier, thousands of people on the other which brought him back to 9/11. It is also the day of protest side of the ocean were wiped out by two suicidal planes. This in London and throughout Europe against the planned one, right one above Perowne's head, zooming toward the invasion of Iraq led by the United States and the United center of London, might once more wreak havoc in his world. Kingdom, and it turns out to be "the largest gathering of Now, as Perowne loos from his shutter, he wonders if he humanity in the history of the islands" (McEwan, 2004: 126). should do something, call the emergency services, maybe. It The news from television, the views Perowne saw when he is an idle thought — there is nothing useful to be done — but drove to play squash, and the topics Perowne had with his the passivity of his spectator's role troubles him. His crime two adult children, are all about the demonstration. And the was to stand in the safety of his bedroom, wrapped in a 9/11 attack serves as the flash point, or the pretext for the

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Iraq war. Through the plot of Saturday, we can tell that Iraq colleagues are proponent of the Iraq war. The ambivalence is a rotten place, a natural ally of terrorists, bound to cause toward the war lets bare the huge division in society. mischief at some point and may as well be taken out now while the U.S. military is feeling perky after Afghanistan C. The Prevalence of Uncertainty (McEwan, 2004: 187). It is the hotbed of terrorism, and will Uncertainty is another element penetrating the post-9/11 some day drag human beings into an unfathomable abyss. society. It runs mainly in three ways. The first part is And we should use 9/11 as a pretext to wage war against Iraq. people's attitude towards Muslim. Do they have the same Theo and Daisy are against the Iraq war. On the one hand, human rights as we do? Should they discriminate against the there is no smoking gun showing that Iraq is colluded with religious heterogeneity? This train of thoughts runs deeply in terrorists. On the other hand, they worried that war begets democratic countries like Britain and the U.S. Some argued more wars only. If the Iraq war breaks out, there would be that there is no difference between them and Arabians, for all relentless disasters. of show are born equal. But some believed that Islam is just As for Henry Perowne, the protagonist, his attitude a dystopia that strikes as a holy grail to jihadists. There are toward the war is quiet ambivalent. For or against the war on also people like Henry Perowne, whose stance changes all terror, or the war in Iraq; for the termination of an odious the time, depending on the people around him. tyrant and his crime family, for the ultimate weapons In Britain, heterogeneity is worshipped, not homogeneity. inspection, the opening of the torture prisons, locating the But in the book, the uncertainty about the identities, the mass graves, the chance of liberty and prosperity, and a boarder between the personal and the public realms exists. warning to other despots; or against the boring of civilians, Like 13-year-old Briony in McEwan's another novel, the inevitable refugees and famine, illegal international Atonement, suddenly aware that "the world, the social world, action, the wrath of Arab nations and the swelling of Al- was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and Qaeda's ranks. Either way, it amounts to a consensus of a everyone's thoughts striving in equal importance and kind, an orthodoxy of attention, a kind of subjugation in everyone's claim on life as intense" (McEwan, 2001: 72) — itself. "Dose he think that his ambivalence — if that's what it Perowne, too, is caught between the vividness of interiority really is — excuses him from the general conformity" (the clarity of his private, sensuous pleasures) and the (McEwan, 2004: 330). confusing demands of what lies outside. As a wealthy Henry Perowne's stance of the Iraq war changes professional, he is better equipped than most to see off the throughout the plot. Normally he might be opposed to war, threatening cacophony of the two billion voices. His time is but he has been under the influence of a patient, an Iraqi spent shuttling from one privileged, embattled sanctuary to professor of archaeology, Miri Taleb, who has been a victim another: his handsome house, bristling with locks and panic to Hussein's sinister tyranny. As Taleb argues, "it's only buttons, his cream-upholstered silver Mercedes, his squash terror that holds the nation together, the whole system runs court, his surgery (Zoe, 2005: 3). Still, the otherness of the on fear, and no one knows how to stop it. Now the western world hankers after is on the wane. Individuals' Americans are coming, perhaps for bad reasons. But Saddam voices are constantly submerged by the public. The and the Ba'athists will go" (McEwan, 2004: 64). Then, uncertainty about the boarder between the individual and the having seen a professor's scars and listened to his stories of public is exacerbating. Saddam's atrocities, Perowne has been motivated to read The last uncertainty is about lot, both personal and further about Iraq and has acknowledged that Iraq was national. It's all said that providence has it. Yet, after the 9/11 indeed a republic of fear and that Saddam's regime was held attack, the western world is no longer so sure about their accountable for the massacres in Kurdish Iraq. As for future. Prior to 2001, civilians live in prosperity, enjoyed Perowne's daughter, Daisy, on the other hand, is opposed to waves of technological breakthroughs, and lived longer than the Iraq war, arguing that the invasion is "completely any other generations ever did. In a nutshell, they believed barbaric" (McEwan, 2004: 185). McEwan is thus able, that they dwelled in a wonderland that cannot be interrupted. through the thoughts of Perowne as he goes about his day, But the bubble bursted as two plans dived into the WTO, and through his interactions with other characters, to allow claiming more than 2000 lives. Now, as appeared in the book, both sides of the opinion to be imparted in an authentically people lived in great uncertainties. dialogic way. Aspects of the argument both for and against the war are shown to have merit, and the difficulties involved The first chapter of the novel is taken for an example: in in making decisive choices are lucidly dramatized (Andrew, the first pages of Saturday, it can be told that Perowne awoke 2010: 15). before the break of dawn, looking out from his bedroom shutter. As he witnesses the jumbled rooftops of nighttime For Henry Perowne himself, is the war justified or just an London, he was filled with a sense of the order of things. excuse for religious discrimination? Will it do well to Iraqis "Henry thinks the city is a success, a brilliant invention, a or wreak havoc in their country? Will it promote democracy biological masterpiece — millions teeming around the or otherwise endanger it? Are we in a position to invade accumulated and layered achievements of the centuries, as another sovereign state? Is Christianity superior to Muslim? though around a coral reef, sleeping, working, entertaining Questions like these are hard to escape and haunt Henry themselves, harmonious for the most part, nearly everyone Perowne all along. And it's not just about Henry Perowne, wanting it to work." (McEwan, 2004: 45) But then he but the whole society. Every character in the story has his observed something bizarre on the horizon — a comet, or own stances. His two children are against the Iraq war. His

650 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 356 perhaps, a meteor. As it flied nearer, he realizes it is an B. The "Two Cultures" airliner on fire — tearing apart the night envelope towards Another crisis revealed in Saturday is the division Heathrow. Might it be another terrorist catastrophe? Or it is between two cultures — science and literature. In the first just a normal accident. Instantly, his illusion of intellectual decade of the 21st century, science and technology is taking mastery over his surroundings is shattered and the euphoric off by leaps and bounds. But with the rise of science, visions of civic cooperation are replaced by dreadful literature is no doubt ignored. This is the embarrassment of imaginings of panic and death. Now in the Post-9/11 Era, contemporary urban culture. The values of humanitarianism people are uncertain of their future, they don't know when have been replaced by mechanical logic. The emotions of terrorists will wreak havoc again. They have been living in human beings have been wiped out without any trace in the relentless uncertainty and trepidation. rational thinking of this scientific logic. The rich and luxurious goods of the contemporary city constitute a III. CRISIS OF POST-INDUSTRIAL CULTURE ubiquitous and magnificent picture. In essence, this is only a huge illusion of human beings. In this illusion, people forget A. Consumerism their inner selves and forget their lives. Different individuals The book was set in the 2000s, when the post-industrial are assimilated into a scientific but lifeless image. In turn, it was on the rise and post-industrial consumerism took the becomes abstract in the scientific world. People in modern hold of Western world. Thanks to constant technological world can find distorted material euphoria, but cannot find breakthroughs and ever expanding capitalism, the harmony and gaiety in literature. People who become consumerism was disastrously distorted. And this distortion machine vassals and material slaves are becoming more and was vividly depicted in Saturday and in many scenarios it more objectified. The glory of contemporary cities can only strokes, in some strange sense, fetishism. It mainly takes reflect the darkness of humanity. place in economic life. Perowne's family is the embodiment The idea of "Two Cultures" was first brought up by of the consumerism of post-industrial culture. As a British novelist and scientist C. P. Snow in his 1959 Rede neurosurgeon, Perowne is in the high rung of the social Lecture. The thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole ladder. He is, one can say, the enjoyer of modernization. In Western society" was split into the titular two cultures, the story, he has a Mercedes S500, "A silver Mercedes S 500 namely the science and humanity. And that this was a major with cream upholstery — and he's no longer embarrassed by hindrance to solving problems. In the novel, McEwan creates it. He doesn't even love it — it's simply a sensual part of two characters, the neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne and his what he regards as his overgenerous share of the world's poet daughter Daisy to represent the confrontation between goods (McEwan, 2004: 138). The car can show off his science and literature. statute and prosperity. Perowne's egoism and fetishism are typical features of modern consumerism, which makes Throughout the novel, the debate on these two parallel people subject to the pleasure created by machines. In a discourses constantly appears between Perowne and Daisy. consumption-led society dominated by merchandises and Perowne has always turned his nose up at literature and held images, "the great creativity of hearts is constantly dissolved dear to science. Daisy instead recommends him book lists to by fetichism, and individual's spiritual culture is giving way cure his philistinism, but so far, not even Tolstoy and to object's material culture" (Jameson, 1987: 38). Flaubert have done the trick, despite that under Daisy's direction, Henry has read the whole of 'Anna Karenina' and Consumerism no doubt further compounds the already 'Madame Bovary,' two acknowledged masterpieces. At the serious divisions among different classes, which was cost of slowing his mental processes and many hours of his revealed in a car accident between the protagonist and a thug, valuable time, he committed himself to the shifting who is just blue collar representing the lower classes in intricacies of these sophisticated fairy stories. What did he western society. The development of electronic products, grasp, after all? That adultery is understandable but wrong, Microsoft, information and bio-technology make the borders that 19th-century women had a hard time of it, that Moscow between human beings and objects more distorted and and the Russian countryside and provincial France were once vaguer. This process, may not presents as the objection of just so. If, as Daisy said, the genius was in the detail, then he human beings, but may as the humanization of objects, was unmoved (McEwan, 2004: 122). which become a part of our domestic life. In most cases now, people rely not on the real world, but the virtual one to A neurosurgeon and a professional, Perowne is the kind confirm their identities and even their kinship and emotional of man that only takes science to his heart. After all, it is bound. According to Jürgen Habermas, this interaction is due medical science that gives him a leg up in the modern world. to lack of "communicative rationality", so it can be He believes in his heart that literature is a kind of kitsch potentially violent. The 9/11 attack is the evidence of the killing leisure time. He is right in some sense: literature destruction of this violence, leaving relentless trauma to cannot offer watertight explanations or give definite answers. people. This trauma transcends over countries, cultures, races, What literature does help, McEwan indicates, is to capture genders, and ages and strikes as a warning and irony to the the moral intricacies of domestic life and historical objection of human beings and the humanization of objects background that is lived experience. (Li, 2013: 6). Deep in McEwan's heart, as we can tell from his works, literature is an essential part to civilization and science. It is the imaginative aspect of literature, its lack of empirical truth

651 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 356 value that disturbs and alienates Henry (Susan, 2010: 64). In Bureaucratic and commercialized city structures have giving us a protagonist so averse to the charms of his own damaged individual's freedom. science, McEwan showcases a back to the questions about the value and purpose of literature that he brought up in In the The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre wrote "Atonement." In the novel's apogee, McEwan arranges for that, "the resurgence of space belongs to conceptualized his protagonist to be given a clear-cut example of literature's spatial space, and the resurgence of space is the space of power. scientists, policymakers, meritocrats and societal engineers" (Lefebvre, 1991: 38). And it is in this power-oriented spatial As night falls, Perowne is once again back in his well- structure that relations of production in capitalist society decorated house, hosting a family reunion. His son has usurped subjects, becoming the priority, and the sentimental returned from a band performance. His daughter has just appeals took a back seat. The rise of spatial homogeneity and come back from Paris. His aged father-in-law also lives here. the decay of individual's heterogeneity resonate with the But when Rosalind comes to complete the party, it is with theme of Saturday. Day after day, individual's freedom, violent invaders in tow. The upcoming action plays out as emotions, diversity and dignity have been corrupted by the vintage McEwan nightmare. Brandished are knives. Punched homogeneity of modern society. are noses. Terrifying violence is in the offing. And then, at the very moment of crisis, the recitation of a poem, Dover IV. CRISIS OF INDIVIDUAL Beach by Mathew Arnold, leads to a miraculous transformation. Violence is averted by a Victorian poet. Here A. The Distorted Inter-subjectivity is the conflict between violence and love. Here, too, of course, is the transformative power of literature. This, we can In 1970s, under Thatcherism, the economic inequality say, is a preposterous scenario. Apart from the credibility- was worsening; social confrontation is intensifying, Britons' defying spectacle of the demoniac underclass reined in, even spiritual world also suffered waves of crises (Wang, 2006: 2). momentarily, by verse, there is the flamboyant literalism In Saturday, it's not uncommon to say that when one leads a with which the novel's ideas are made manifest. Here is successful and prosperous life, his happiness can be civilized joy threatened by thug-like hordes. Here are the guaranteed. In the book, at least seen from the surface, twin feelings of culpability and helplessness foreshadowed at Perowne is happy. Perowne is a fortunate man. In addition to the beginning of the book. Here is the conflict between his worthy, fulfilling job and the panoply of upper- middle- hatred and sympathy for one's enemy. Here, too, of course, is class privileges it pays for, he is blessed with a joyous the transformative capacity of art. domestic life. He has two successful, attractive children — 23-year-old Daisy, who is about to publish her first collection of poetry, and 18-year-old Theo, a prodigiously

C. Homogeneity talented blues musician. He also has a lovely, capable wife, Another significant feature of post-industrial culture is Rosalind, with whom, after nearly a quarter-century of homogeneity, homogeneity of of the styles of buildings, of marriage, he remains deeply in love. He has two successful, the city's layout, of lifestyles. The buildings in London Street attractive children, and a lovely, capable wife, Rosalind, with look all the same. On the way to visit Perowne mother, "A whom, after nearly a quarter-century of marriage, he remains rectilinear curve sweeps him past recent office buildings of deeply in love. These blessings, coupled with his confidence glass and steel where the lights are already on in the in the certainty of medical progress, gives rise to a February early afternoon. He glimpses people as neat as satisfaction that verges perilously on complacency. In architectural models, at their desks, before their screens, another time and place, Perowne would almost certainly be a even on a Saturday. This is the tidy future of his childhood smug man. But it is his fate to live in the early 21st century science fiction comics, of men and women with tight-fitting — in the "baffled and fearful" days following 9/11 and collarless jumpsuits — no pockets, trailing laces or untucked leading up to the current war in Iraq — and neither his shirts — living a life beyond litter and confusion, free of embarrassment of riches, nor his general inclination to clutter to fight evil" (McEwan, 2004: 283). The clarity and optimism, can protect him from the darkness of his times. transparency of buildings depicts a picture of Perowne's We can tell from the plot that distorted inter-subjectivity working life, and features the rigor of modern capitalism. haunting Perowne. Inter-subjectivity is the psychological In a city where efficiency and function take priority, stiff relation between people. It is usually used in contrast to and clear space is definitive. But such logic completely solipsistic individual experience, emphasizing people's overlooks the interpersonal communications and ignores the inherently social beings. But the inter-subjectivity depicted people's subtle experience of space. As buildings become in Saturday is distorted. commercialized machines, the people dwelling in buildings One significant hallmark of this distorted inter- also turn to standardized people. This kind of space and this subjectivity is apathy. While driving to a squash game in the structure philosophy completely ignores the people's richness, padded privacy of his Mercedes, Perowne is forced by an diversity, and immanence. Human beings are sacrificed for antiwar march to make a detour from his usual route and the sake of efficiency, and became numb machines under the becomes involved in a minor car accident. The men in the control of standard space (Wang, 2005: 128). But on the other car want immediate compensation. When Perowne contrary to the surface appearance, this homogeneous refuses to do so, violence is inevitable. But he has been building layout in fact impairs people's subjectivity. closely observing the leader of the trio, a thug named Baxter, and he is pretty sure he has spotted in him the early

652 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 356 symptoms of a degenerative illness called Huntington's data is under supervision of companies like Baidu and disease. By confronting him with this diagnosis, he makes a Tencent. People's ways of life are under the influence of the distraction that allows him to escape unharmed. As a doctor, communities around us. Alas, disciplined and he is expected to show Baxter sympathy and care. And yet institutionalized people are. he exploits the illness to escape. This is also a feature of modern world. Under capitalism, inter-subjectivity falls prey C. Recovery to money, and gives way to apathy. In creating a protagonist who is simultaneously Another feature of the distorted inter-subjectivity is Everyman, and an ardent anti-intellectual, McEwan offers aphephobia. It is an extreme fear of being touched, which his readers a hero whose psychology fits Gilroy's description. ranges from simply feeling uneasy when being touched to Admittedly, as an author who has long engaged in questions feel a sharp pain simply by being brushed at. It is an of Englishness and English identity, McEwan has frequently extremely distorted external reaction and a psychological offered his readers flawed protagonists — characters such as distance. Living in modern cities, on the one hand, people Stephen Lewis in The Child in Time (1987) or Joe Rose in want to learn and get learned. But on the other hand, they are Enduring Love (1997), men who mark the particular afraid of being harmed. So they choose to stay aside intersection of individuated yet representative psychologies psychologically. This can be seen from Perowne's relations (Elizabeth, 2007: 3). But McEwan is always intended to with his family members. He is a professional neurosurgeon offer a silver of hope to his readers. And despite the trauma and in common sense is supposed to be good at dealing with and crises happening to Perowne, he recovers in the finale of people. Yet outside the hospital, he cannot establish deep the story. communications with his two children. His interactions, even The confrontation between Baxter, the thug, and Perowne, sexual relations with his wife, are mere manual actions. He strikes as the very division between different classes of that has bad relations with his father-in-law. His relationship with time, and the reflection over the 9/11 attack. In some way, it his colleagues is all but squash match. This aphephobia has is Perowne's egoism and apathy that cause Baxter to take coursed through the story, and in Perowne, McEwan lays offense and seek revenge. All the same, it is democratic bare the inner-workings of a particularly Western, countries' indifference and superiority that partly led to the particularly contemporary life: privileged, happily secular, terrorist attack. In the story, after the accident, McEwan and marked by an unsustainable apartness from the arranges for his protagonist to cure the patient, also the thug, "monstrous and spectacular scenes" (Graham, 2010: 7). with empathy and love. Facing Baxter who lies on the bed in hospital, and who once threatens his and his families' lives, B. Discipline and Institutionalization Perowne's morality and humanities are again more Like the panopticon depicted in Discipline and challenged. He also suffers from quasi-Hamlet choice: save Punishment (Foucault, 1999), the Britain society in Saturday him or not, this is a question. Finally, the recovery of is a same place. In this novel, Perowne's house was set in the Perowne's morality revives the "rooted, intelligent and moral center of London, the most prosperous in the whole city and ability in his self. Perowne in the end defeats himself and the best place to sightsee the city. From the window, acts as saint. He saves Baxter's life and the hopes for himself, Perowne is like an observer, witnessing passers-by day after and evaluates his own spiritual world. This is also McEwan day, "cheerful lunchtime office crowds, the solemn, studious the writer's message to the developed countries: it's boys from the Indian hostel, lovers in quiet raptures or crisis, unjustified to just pin all the sins on Muslims. It's true that the crepuscular drug dealers, the ruined old lady with her Islam has its own flaws, but our attitudes toward their wild, haunting calls…" (McEwan, 2004: 13). What he does religion should also be put under check. There is no such an not notice is that he is also the observed, by invisible power advanced culture or backward culture and what is needed to in modern society. The complete, sensuous flesh and blood is do is tolerance and empathy, justice and compassion. far from being exhausted by the abstraction and conceptualization of rationalism, and the industrial While buying the ingredients for a fish stew he plans to civilization of capitalism causes the exhaustion of the human make for supper, Perowne ponders the latest scientific soul. But his professional ethics, his tastes, his tendency, are research indicating that fish have a higher degree of capacity all institutionalized and disciplined by capitalism, by for pain than has previously been assumed. "This", he thinks, industrial culture, and by the environment after 9/11. All his "is the growing complication of the modern condition, the life is observed without him knowledge, thus all his own expanding circle of moral sympathy. Not only distant dispositions depraved. peoples are our brothers and sisters, but foxes too, and laboratory mice, and now the fish"(McEwan, 2004: 221). Observance is ubiquitous, and makes up a spacious net, under which society's malice is under mechanic surveillance. V. CONCLUSION After more than a decade of the initial publication, Saturday still reverberate in our time. In today's world, as artificial In a nutshell, Saturday is undoubtedly a masterpiece in intelligence and cloud computing progressed by leaps and contemporary literature world that depicts in grandeur all the bounds, the Orwellian world is becoming a reality. Our crises after the 9/11 attack, thus showing people the shopping tendencies are morphed into the types the panorama of the 21st century. It shows people a string of advertisers just needed. "Our society is not an open society, crises: the flaws of democratic world, the divisions between but an observed one" (Foucault, 1995: 32). People's personal different religions, the confrontation between cultures, and

653 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 356 most of all, the crises of society and individuals. McEwan's in-depth dissection of discipline and institutionalization modern worlds offers people a unique way of analyzing the decaying of empathy and the rise of apathy. By analyzing McEwan's way of stream of consciousness and his way of describing psychological activities, people can have a better and clearer look of novels. From the perspective of crisis to analyze Saturday, critiques and writers could analyze Saturday with an overall look at the world in the post-9/11 era. What's more, in the view of Perowne, McEwan takes his responsibilities as a novelist. In Saturday, McEwan also through the psychological activities reflects on the egoism of democratic countries and the middle class. He may be just a British writer, what he has unveiled is about all human beings. He is deeply wary of the decay of cultures and the receding humanities yet he holds high hopes for people's race. So he is intended to arise people's empathy, inspire them to weather the crises mentioned above, be aware of the infinite power of literature, and then usher in a new Sunday. And the author believes even in 2019 more than a decade after the debut of Saturday, facing the rise of terrorism, the disintegration of common values, the study of this distinguished book can extract meaningful lessons for the progress of mankind.

REFERENCES [1] Dan, Hansong. "Two Narrative Dimensions in '9/11' Novels: Falling Man and Let the Great World Spin," Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2 (2011): p66-73. [2] Foley, Andrew. "Liberalism in the New Millennium: Ian McEwan's Saturday," Journal of Literary Studies, (2010): p135-162. [3] Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York City: Vintage Books. [4] Fredric, Jameson. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1992. [5] Green, Susan. "Consciousness and Ian McEwan's Saturday: 'What Henry knows'," English Studies, 91 (2010): p58-73. [6] Hillard, Graham. The Limits of Rationalism in Ian McEwan's Saturday. The Explicator, 2 (2010): p140-143. [7] Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991. [8] Li, Juhua. "Approaching Communicative Thoughts in Ian McEwan's Saturday," Contemporary Foreign Studies, 1(2013). [9] McEwan, Ian. Atonement. London: Jonathan Cape, Inc. 2001. [10] McEwan, Ian. Saturday. New York: Random House, Inc. 2004. [11] Ni, Lian. "The State Interference into the Private Sphere in Ian McEwan's Saturday," Journal of Jiangsu University of Technology, 5(2015): p68. [12] Ou, Rong. "The Motif of Crisis in David Lodge's Fiction," Shanghai: Shanghai International Studies University, 2007. [13] Wallace, Elizabeth. "Post-colonial melancholia in Ian McEwan's Saturday," Denton: University of North Texas, 2007, (39): 465-480. [14] Wang, Minan. Body, Space and Post-modernism. Nanjing: Jiangsu's People Publishing, 2005. [15] Wang, Shouren&He Ning. The 20th Century British Literature. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2006.

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